Are tomatoes fruits or vegetables?! Let us give you an answer
This confusion which is about ‘fruit’ and ‘vegetable’ arises because of the differences of the usage between scientists and cooks. True fruits which are developed from the ovary in the base of the flower, and contain the seeds of the plant such as raspberries, oranges, blueberries and many kinds of nuts; So scientifically, tomatoes are definitely fruits. There are other plants which have a soft part that supports the seeds and also are called ‘fruits’, although it is not developed from the ovary such as the strawberry as an example. The term ‘vegetable’ is generally used for referring to other edible parts of plants, such as cabbage leaves, celery stalks, onions, peppers, cucumbers and potato tubers, as they are not strictly the fruit of the plant from which they come and so they are called real vegetables. Sometimes, the term ‘fruit’ could be used in referring to a part of a plant which is not a fruit, but which is used in sweet cooking such as rhubarb as for example.
To take the apple as an example, Botanists consider the apple core a fruit, because it is a ripened ovary which contains seeds. The entire apple (the core and the flesh surrounding the core) is also considered a fruit, according to the looser definition of fruit.
According to cooking, some things which are strictly fruits such as tomatoes or bean pods, we may call them ‘vegetables’ because they are used in savory instead of sweet cooking. So the answer to the headline question is that tomatoes are technically the fruit of the tomato plant, but it’s used as a vegetable in cooking.
